The Secret Sharer
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The Secret Sharer is a novella written by Joseph Conrad in 1909, and first published in book form in 1912, though it had appeared in Harper’s before then. It contains a theme typical for Conrad; that of a solitary character challenged from external and internal agents.
Plot
The story takes place at sea, near the Gulf of Siam, and is told from the perspective of a young Captain who remains nameless throughout the story. The captain is unfamiliar with both his ship and his crew, having only joined their company a fortnight previously, and is furthermore unsure of himself, not knowing if he can live up to the role of such an authority figure, though it expands on these ideas with unique symbolic ambiguity.
The captain soon encounters a naked swimmer holding onto the side of the ship, whilst he is on the look-out, alone, at night. He helps the swimmer in and hides him in his cabin, where he learns of the mysterious swimmers past; his name is Leggatt, and he swam away from a nearby ship, called the Sephora, where, as chief mate, he killed another crew member for insolence during a storm.
Leggatt is then kept hidden in the Captain’s quarters, away from the suspicious crew members and a visit from the skipper of the Sephora. Eventually the Captain allows Leggatt to escape by pulling off a risky sailing manoeuvre that nearly sends the ship into the rocks, as he tries to bring the ship close enough to the land for Leggatt to swim away safely.
The captain is struck by how Leggatt seems to be his double, though the exact nature of this duality is left ambiguous by Conrad.
Readings
There are many different ways of reading the text. These are a few possible interpretations:
- The story is about the loneliness and isolation that one can endure whilst at sea for a long time. Leggatt was driven mad enough that he killed a man irrationally, and the captain is pushed into endangering the ship, though by sheer good fortune he manages to avoid destruction. The captain thinking that Leggatt is his double is purely psychological, and is caused by the arrival of a new person on board who sees the captain as a human being rather than simply as the man in charge.
- It is an allegory about forgiveness. Leggatt is similar to Cain who murdered his brother Abel in Genesis, and is subsequently banished to wander the earth. Leggatt too is forced into exile, to wander forever as a fugitive, but through doing this he and the captain are both absolved of the guilt that they feel; Leggatt for what he has done, and the captain because he is the secret sharer of Leggatt’s guilt.
- The bond between Leggatt and the captain could also be homosexual – the secret they share is their feelings for each other, which have to be kept hidden from the other crewmembers because they are unacceptable. The descriptions of shared understanding and dual-consciousness are reminiscent of Aristophanes’ account of people having been the same person at the beginning of time, as found in the Symposium (Plato).
- It could also be about the captain discovering who he really is, by establishing his inner worth against adversity. At the beginning of the story the captain is unsure about himself and if he’ll be able to fulfil his duty, but through successfully concealing a fugitive, and allowing him to escape without destroying his ship and crew, the captain gains knowledge of what the ship can do, how the crew work, and how daring he can be; furthermore, the crew respect the captain’s judgement and a bond of trust is set between them. Leggatt could furthermore be a dopplegänger, coming to the captain in order that he could achieve this wholeness of character.
- The doppelgänger reading could moreover be expanded upon. It’s possible that Leggatt did in fact drown at sea, and his ghost has come to help the captain, so that he doesn’t follow the same path and end up killing someone himself. This reading is less convincing than the other ones, though it is reinforced by the numerous descriptions of Leggatt as being ghost like.
- Lastly, the story could be about class struggle. Leggatt and the captain were both educated on the HMS Conway (school ship), and may have seen themselves as different, if not better, than their fellow crew members. The mysterious bond between the two characters is therefore one based on class and education, and would not be understood by the other crew members, hence the secrecy.
Writing
The short story was created whilst Conrad was writing Under Western Eyes; he wrote the Secret Sharer as a break from his much larger novel that was emotionally difficult for him to write. There are similarities between the two stories, with the Captain and Leggatt becoming Razumov and Haldin respectively.
The story was based on a real account – the chief mate of the Cutty Sark killed another crew-member for insolence during a storm, and was later arrested in London for his murder. Conrad also drew on his own time as captain of the Otago, when his first mate did not trust him, and got a particular scare when Conrad manoeuvred the ship dangerously close to rocks in the gulf of Siam.
The story originally appeared in Harper's Magazine, under the title "The Secret-Sharer", but Conrad revised the title to make it more ambiguous, making Leggatt secretly share with the captain, rather than merely sharing a secret.
Many proleptic devices are used that ironically predict what happens in the story. An example of this is when the captain doubts at the start of the story that the ship "was not likely to keep any special surprises", yet it gives him a very special surprise in the form of Leggatt. This technique was commonly used by Conrad.
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